minor updates

The archives list was getting lengthy and confusing. Changed to a monthly format.

Changed my email update address from my .intel.com one, as that'll no longer function as of next monday.

Religion

Brian today posted an interesting piece regarding his thoughts on religion, god, and sentience that is an interesting read regardless of your beleifs.

Which reminded me that I'd forgotten another link I wanted to add to a friend's blog:

Meet Matt Fife. Matt was a 3D graphics research engineer here at Intel before deciding that he'd like to go to seminary college at Mt Angel here in Oregon. While we differ on many beleifs, it's been very interesting to read about the education there and to see Matt's transformation into a much deeper, spiritual person.

If nothing else, check out his photo gallery. Matt is an awesome photographer. A sample:

All this postin' on religion. Perhaps because of the impending CGDC?

Sin City

Went to see Sin City tonight with Adam.

Ah, but it was uber-phat. Saw it at the Bagdad theatre, a really cool old place owned by the McMenamin brothers (that own, like, a bajillion bars in Portland). It's a cool building, and even cooler because you can drink beer while you watch a flick.

I likes me the stylized violence and I likes me the beer!

Carney Talk!

This is the most awesome list of carney terminology. I'm going to start working these into my vocabulary for everyday talk around the office at the new job.

Or should I say, I'm gonna use this to develop a new call before I bail the counter!

New links

I've been meaning to add a few links to other blogs I frequent. They are on the right hand side of the page.

John Stark's blog. Another ex-montrealer, John builds giant display walls. I beleive the biz model is "charge secret military operation a bajillion dollars to build display wall. Then charge hollywood two bajillion to make display wall that you promise looks just like the secret military one you aren't supposed to know about". John himself is also giant. (Ol' montreal trivia: Tim & John, both linked from my blog, were once college roommates. During a drunken party, Tim sat on John's shoulders and yelled "who runs barter town!?" in Master-Blaster fashion, and we've never stopped laughing about it since)

Gamefam. Dan Matkowsky's blog aimed at the {if (parent && gamer)} set. Looks like it's gonna be great.

Jane. Jane writes for GamePro, maintains a blog as part of that job, has a personal blog, and created GameGirlAdvance. So I'm triple linking her!

Enjoy!

Gone huntin'

...house hunting that is.

We're up in Redmond for the weekend doing some house hunting in the area. Exhausting to do with two little ones that need to be strapped in and un-strapped from the car seats 10 times a day.

It's a nice area. I think we'll like it here. Definitely very "pacific northwest" like Portland (which I guess means it's green, it's Green, it's casual, it's outdoorsy. They are very into bicycles here, which is good.

We looked at some places that were a 10 minute bike ride from the MS campus. We also looked at places that were a ~30 minute drive (in traffic, 15 minutes without). Location of the former is nice. what you get for your money is nice with the latter. Either way, the ones we liked were the ones that were out of our price range.

Alisa's comment before bed tonight made me laugh: "we need to find some more money". Uh, 'find'? Does that mean I'm supposed to go rob a bank after she goes to bed? :-)

Anyhoo. Another bit of looking tommorrow and then back to Portland and back for my last week at Intel.

For your literate labs...

Gretchen Ledgard at MS points us to Reading with Rover, a literacy program aimed at young kids. An awesome sounding program in the Seattle area. Sounds like it's only there so far, but the site has info on starting your own chapter. Go for it!

"In the "Rover" program, children with reading difficulties actually read stories to a dog and the dog loves to listen! A child that may be hesitant to read aloud to his peers is typically less stressed when reading to a dog and the dog never judges the child's reading ability."

Alisa used to take our dog buddy to be a therapy dog at old folks homes and such. It's amazing the comfort our canine friends can bring to some folks (even if they cause me nuthin' but headaches! :-)

Anyhow, this sounds like a noble cause.

Happy (belated) America Day

I'd meant to post some pix of our July 4, but didn't get around to it till now.

We started by taking a walk with the kids, master-blaster style, for a walk through the forest next to our block, and then over to see the horsies up the street and feed them some apples.

Tom gets a giggle out of the big "nay nay"

Jenny also likes the horsies.

There are actually 4 of them, but one wasn't around.

Then it was back home for some relaxation on the deck. Tom & Jenny changed into little kimono outfits from Alisa's mom's friend in Japan.

Gardening Time

We then went to a BBQ at Pete and Jen's place (sorry no pictures). I made yummy Tropical Hot Pepper Salsa:

- 2 mangos (diced)

- 1 papaya (diced

- juice of 1 lime

- minced fist full of cilantro

- diced Jalapenos (1 = wimpy, 2 = not as wimpy, 3 = now we're talkin', 4 = "whassat? can't talk?")

mix it up and serve. Gets better if it sits for a few hours.

Then back home to put the kids to bed and watch fireworks off the deck.

The view we get of the insanity that is American Pyrotechnic Enthusiasm is pretty awesome. We have a view that goes for miles and it really looks like there's a war going on, with rockets going off as far as the eye can see (Despite their being illegal here!) and smoke drifting across the valley. Here's a poor attempt at a composite shot taken at two angles for a "widescreen" view:

The view from the deck

The only down side is that out poor neurotic dog is terrified of the fireworks and he's a wreck for a couple weeks before and after the fourth.

This year, the fireworks woke Tom and Jenny up, so we got them out of bed to watch, and they loved it. Definitely the highlight of my July 4!

I heard the news today oh boy...

On the radio this morning:

"In London, over 40 so far dead and 350 injured as bombs went off in several subway stations and a double decker bus.

More on that in a couple minutes, but first, over to (name) for 'Celebrity Sleaze' here on (station name)"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a fine snapshot of what's wrong with the media today.

*Sigh*

Beer League!

There's the National Hockey League.

Then there's the Junior Hockey League.

And then there's Beer League.

Bye Bye Twinky!

Sold my Twinky pinball tonight. :-(

We're moving so I have to get rid of some of these machines. Too heavy to transport, and I'm not sure we'll have room for them.

As a pinball game, Twinky's kind of lame. Nowhere near the complexity of play that machines in the late 70's and early 80's developed (for what it's worth, I think pinball went downhill after that. elegance gave way to overcomplexity and gadgetry. Sigh). However, I love the kitchy theme, which is modelled after Twiggy, with some American Bandstand type theme thrown in there. Note the NBC-style peacock on the scoreboard and Dick-Clark-esque announcer:


and note the sixties-style models on the playfield:


By Twinky! I'll miss you!

Super Disco Hard Drive Action!

Check THIS out!

The way it's meant to be played? In private!

...without Nvidia intruding on my space!

Sorry, I've been a little marketinundated (a poor attempted at another portmanteau) with the "The way it's meant to be played" Nvidia campaign. (TWIMTBP)

I just picked up Lego Star Wars for PC after looking around for a while (Kathy Schoback wasn't kidding about publishers shorting the market!), and I get the TWIMTBP splash screen. The box has a separate TWIMTBP leaflet inserted in the box that tells me that Nvidia powers will help me defeat the dark side. Nvidia, has it occurred to you that I may have reasons to not want to defeat the dark side?

Then my IGDA membership card arrives in the mail... and has a TWIMTBP logo on the back! Argh! Jason, you owe me a beer!

Article on MS hiring trends

Here's an interesting article on MS's hiring trends and issues faced in today's competitive talent market.

The article also mentions Gretchen Ledgard's blog (an MS recruiter blog) and the recent fuss about a recent post on it.

For what it's worth, my interviewing experience with MS was NOTHING like what the article describes, and was in fact very pleasant. They tolerated my tendency to "interview them more than they interview me", and were genuinely interested in finding a good fit for my talents. I plan on doing a detailed write-up at some point after I start there. Stay tuned!

Lay down paper money for Paper Mario?

So at E3 2004, I saw Paper Mario for like, 5 minutes, and it's been nagging at the back of my brain for 15 months.

Today I came across this analysis/writeup of it on GameDevBlog, and now the nagging's getting louder.

Will need to pick up a GC and Paper Mario after the move. Hey, I bought a PS2 just to play Katamari, so this'll actually be a cheaper "single game purchase. Plus, Nintendo seems to be the only console vendor making real efforts to foster innovation.

Holy Real Estate Market!

We got a very reasonable offer on our house within hours of it going on the market. I'd heard things were moving quick these days, but this is crazy!

Anyhow, barring any unforseen problems, we'll be good to go and will just have to worry about the task of FINDING a house when we get up to Redmond-area.

Killer Kitty

We have a little black cat in the neighborhood who's new on the block. He's quite a little hunter. I saw him playing with a mouse before killing it just this morning. Here's a list of what he's killed over the past few weeks alone:

• 2 mice
• garter snake
• a bat
• a mole
• a rabbit (!)
• 2 birds

And that's just that I know of.

The rabbit was small but was probably 50% of the kitty's weight, so it must have been a good fight. Go killer kitty!

C'mon in!

You can check out our house listing & see some of those nifty 360-degree virtual tour photos of the place:

http://murrayhillhomes.com/homes/8291184th.htm

http://murrayhillhomes.com/VirtualTour/8291184th/main.htm

BTW, this is a real great example of an application of high dynamic range lighting that would be great. In order to get the room lighting right, the great outside views are totally saturated.

House is now listed...

The house listing is up, for those interested:

Go HERE, and enter search for number 5046640.

Neil Jing has big cahones!

At Intel, we get a sabbatical every seven years, where you get a couple months off. Adding your vacation to it and you can get about 3 months in total. I recently finished mine, returning in time for E3.

On our intranet site at work, they often have stories of people that have done interesting things on sabbatical. One couple went and did humanitarian work in Africa, one guy got his license to drive big rigs and spent sabbatical driving big rig trucks back and forth across the US.

Today there was an awesome story about Neal Jing. At the age of 40, with the cutoff date for sabbatical being 8 months away, and never having climbed a mountain, Neal decided he'd like to climb Everest.

People said he was nuts, that you need to train for years, etc. He decided to do it anyway.

He started training by running 8 miles a day every day but Sunday. Sundays he'd climb a local 1200 foot mountain - twice - wearing a 50lb backpack.

Then, within the next six months, he climbed Mt Rainier in Washington (14k ft), Haba mountain in China (18k ft), and mt Aconcagua in Argentina (23k ft).

Then he summitted Everest this past May.

Some people feel that Everest has gotten easier because you hear about all the "for hire" expeditions that are doing it. The following quote reminded me of how dangerous it really is:

“On the day of the summit, I felt strong and was pushing the Sherpas to move faster,” says Jing. “I had to step over frozen dead people from previous years, some in sitting positions, and some in crawling positions. The only thing in my mind was to reach the summit ASAP.”

Holy crap. That's so hardcore.

Kudos to Neil for reminding us that 40 is anything but over the hill, and that we all could do with pushing our limits some!

More detailed articles here, and here.

(BTW, I also spent part of my sabbatical on a mountain, but not nearly as extreme :-)